SPACE Lab [co-creative art astronomy experiments]
16 February - 5 March 2023
Thurs to Sun, 12-5pm
Private View :
Thursday 16 February 6 - 8pm
Saturday 18 February 2-5pm
SPACE Lab [co-creative art astronomy experiments] presents speculative artworks that respond to current research about the Universe developed through extended co-creation between astrophysicists and artists. It is co-curated by Ulrike Kuchner (astrophysicist, artist and creative producer ) and Nicola Rae (artist and curator).
Preparation of SEADS Ēngines of Ēternity artwork to go to space. Photo credit: Karine Van Doninck.
NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins handling the second SEADS space flight experiment with the evolved Ēngines of Ēternity artwork. Photo credit: NASA.
SPACE Lab
SPACE Lab presents an expanded field of experiments as artworks co-developed by artists with astrophysicists. This show is the outcome of a year-long process involving in-depth conversations between seven collaborative teams of artists and astrophysicists exploring current research. Co-creative juxtapositions that have emerged include exoplanetology and biodesign; speculative future scenarios and decolonisation; black holes and acoustic equivalence; structures of the universe and epigenetic memory; space travel and cultural immortality; dark matter and sensing the invisible; and terrestrial belonging and adaptation to hostility. This exhibition will show the results of these collaborations.
CO-CREATIVE EXPERIMENTS:
Bio-designer Anshuman Gupta, takes inspiration from macro and micro organisms in natural ecosystems to explore a domain of nature-driven innovation in industrial design. His bioborgs translate biofeedback data from plants into tangible outputs, providing real-time information about their physical well-being. For SPACE Lab, he is collaborating with exoplanetary astronomer Amaury Triaud, whose research focuses on circumbinary planets (planets with two suns), and on finding planets that have sizes and temperature similar to Earth. Gupta’s BioBorgs, built as biocomputers that imagine a reality where organisms can act autonomously based on environmental threats, respond to Triaud’s exoplanetary research into the TRAPPIST-1 system, whose planets are most optimal for evidence of life beyond our solar system.
Agi Haines is an internationally exhibiting practitioner, researcher and lecturer whose research looks at the propensity for design to reevaluate the nature of the material of the body in the face of nascent biomedical and healthcare technologies. For SPACE Lab, she is collaborating with Stephen Wilkins, observational and theoretical astronomer from Sussex University and Euclid space telescope astronomer who is focusing on understanding the process of galaxy formation and evolution in the early Universe. Together, they have explored the reasons, difficulties, politics, and moral aspects of sending things to space. Their thought experiments relate to speculative futures of the upcoming European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope.
Monica LoCascio is a mixed-media artist focusing on materiality informed by her theoretical research on memory, somatics, fermentation, epigenetics, heritage crafts, and hierarchies of knowledge and power. For SPACELab, she is collaborating with Ulrike Kuchner, astrophysicist, artist and interdisciplinary researcher of art-science, studying how galaxies form, grow and co-evolve together with the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe. This experiment examines the symbiosis of fermented bio-materials (scoby cultures) and salvaged fibres where they have been exploring the fluidity, vulnerability and tension of the organic growth of structures, and the ethics and culture of humans trying to control this growth.
Alistair McClymont’s installations endeavour to visualise the invisible, to reveal something hidden, or impossible to see. Dark matter makes up most of our universe, its effects can be observed, but it has proven impossible to directly detect. Joint curiosity around its nature form the basis of a number of conversations between the astronomer, Rita Tojeiro and artist, Alistair McClymont. Tojeiro’s astrophysics research focuses on large spectroscopic galaxy redshift surveys to understand the content, geometry and expansion of the Universe. A project began with McClymont experimenting with sections of a telescope that Tojeiro worked with to help understand dark matter. From this starting point a discussion around patterns and sculptural forms has resulted in the creation of objects, the goal being to create an analogy of dark matter that can be directly experienced.
Nicola Rae’s art practice includes an expanded field of experiments engaging with scientific processes and phenomena through digital technologies, analogue equipment and found objects. Her installations include sonic visualisation, acoustic equivalence, sonification and feedback loops of acoustic synthesisation. For SPACE Lab, she is collaborating with the Gravity Lab team led by Silke Weinfurtner including Theo Torres Vicente and Vitor Barroso Silviera. They research gravity simulators for black hole processes, developing novel experiments in relation to fluid and superfluid interfaces. Their hydrodynamic black hole simulator allows study of rotating black hole superradiance, ringdown and backreaction. Engaging with Gravity Lab has led to investigating different systems using gravity, vortices, water and acoustic waves.
Vitor Barroso Silviera website
SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design) is an international transdisciplinary collective of artists, scientists, educators and activists that is actively engaged in deconstructing dominant paradigms about the future and develops alternative models through critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation. SPACE Lab will show their work Ēngines of Ēternity that was created in collaboration with Karine Van Doninck, an evolutionary biologist who has studied the unique evolution of microorganisms called rotifers and their ability to adapt to and survive extreme environments. Ēngines of Ēternity was first launched to the International Space Station ISS on 5 December 2019 and continues to evolve over several subsequent space missions. It is a unique artwork co-created by rotifers, humans, algorithms and the space environment.
Demelza Woodbridge is a multidisciplinary artist who engages with performance, sound and collaborative modes of practice as strategies of resistance to narratives of cultural dominance. Decoloniality combined with a feminist approach inform her practice, and she considers her works as a tool to activate spaces for the potential of the audience to reflect upon their own complicity in the systems that maintain systems of dominance. In SPACE Lab she is collaborating with the Metafuturism Lab led by clinical epidemeologist Mona Nasser including Yvette Gonzalez and Sven Kiefer. The astrophysicists, astronautical scientists, and artists of the interdisciplinary Metafuturism Lab create immersive workshops during which the participants imagine their future lives on existing exoplanetary systems. The participants cocreate and act out speculative future scenarios as science fiction narratives, ideas and methods based on scientific and societal challenges.
SPACE LAB WORKSHOPS
During this project and exhibition, an exciting team of professionals have created opportunities for young people from local communities in Lewisham. Tech Yard’s Creative Technologist Jazmin Morris has designed and led the ‘SPACE Labs: Stars in Your Eyes’ workshops in local schools working alongside astrophysicists Dominic Galliano, Karel Green and Ulrike Kuchner, with Stemette Julia Piekarczyk andUAL Tech Yard staff. The Metafuturism Lab led by Mona Nasser, in collaboration with exoplanetologists from the CHAMELEON laboratory plus training network and artist Demelza Woodbridge, will engage young people in co-creating and acting out speculative future scenarios as science fiction narratives based on scientific and societal challenges.
SPACE Lab: Stars in your Eyes workshop
Creative Technologists
Jazmin Morris
Julia Piekarczyk
Finn Weaver
Ana Marques
Astrophysicists
Karel Green:
Dominic Galliano
Ulrike Kuchner
Metafuturism Lab workshop
Metafuturism Lab
Mona Nasser
Demelza Woodbridge
Chameleon Network
With thanks to Jane Hendrie from LEAN (Lewisham Arts Network)
Funders and Supporters
